To someone watching birds casually, the cuckoo’s behaviour looks almost lazy. Instead of gathering twigs, lining a nest, and ...

Most birds spend hours, days, or even weeks painstakingly building their nests. Some birds make nests out of mud, some build nests in trees, and some birds nest on the ground and simply scrape out a ...

European cuckoos lay very different eggs depending on the host species. Genetic analyses have revealed how this adaptation is inherited without leading to speciation. Bright blue, white, greenish, ...

Coots, the Rodney Dangerfields of the bird world, just might start to get some respect as a result of a new study showing that these common marsh birds are able to recognize and count their own eggs, ...

An adult coot can recognize its own chicks and will attack a parasitic chick that hatches in its nest. Photo by B. Lyon. The American coot is a drab, seemingly unremarkable marsh bird common ...